2026-06-06T16:00:07.953Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/06/politics/chicago-us-attorney-e-jean-carroll-turmoil
- 代理司法部长托德·布兰奇公开为芝加哥联邦检察官安德鲁·布特罗斯辩护，此前后者面临越来越多的批评。
- 一名法官形容大陪审团程序中的检方行为是她前所未见的。
- 辩方律师质疑美国司法部的调查是否出于特朗普政府的政治动机。
本文由AI生成摘要，并经CNN编辑审核。
在伊利诺伊州北部地区联邦检察官办公室经历两周动荡后，代理司法部长已公开出面为其驻芝加哥负责人安德鲁·布特罗斯辩护。
布特罗斯是一名雄心勃勃、行事高调的资深公诉律师，后来转型为辩护律师，在这个拥有众多知名法律从业者的城市里崭露头角。他陷入争议的导火索是其办公室被曝不当处理一项备受关注的调查，对象是被称为“宽视六人组”的一群民主党政客和活动人士。
随后，当他的办公室仍在应对舆论反弹时，另一件事被曝光：布特罗斯的办公室正在监督围绕E·让·卡罗尔的争议性调查。卡罗尔是总统唐纳德·特朗普的对手，曾指控他性侵。
这场负面关注让布特罗斯感到疲惫不堪。据了解他的律师透露，布特罗斯此前在职业生涯中并未表现出党派偏见，他曾在主流律所工作，后来被特朗普任命为芝加哥地区联邦检察官。
“本部门全力支持布特罗斯联邦检察官及其打击暴力犯罪、毒品贩运、移民违规和欺诈行为的工作，我们期待他的办公室能带来更多出色成果，”布兰奇周四在X平台的社交媒体帖子中表示。同一天，总统提名他留任该职位。
布特罗斯在自己的帖子中回应了布兰奇，感谢他的支持，并批评他现在认为是一场旨在破坏他的 coordinated 行动。
“我们已经修复——并将继续修复——我2025年4月接手的这个办公室，当时正如当时媒体广泛报道的那样，它的工作甚至达不到最低标准，”布特罗斯周四在X平台上写道。
“我感谢你们所有人，”布特罗斯还写道，感谢支持他的检察官和其他同事，“我不会忘记，当其他人打着热爱甚至真正关心这个了不起的、历史悠久的办公室的旗号，借机试图破坏办公室稳定时，你们所有人是如何支持我的。”
布特罗斯和布兰奇的联盟不太可能平息人们对这个享有盛誉的芝加哥联邦检察官办公室正陷入危机的担忧，也不会终结法官对“宽视六人组”案件处理方式的调查。
这也凸显了一些司法部批评人士所称的司法部在全国范围内为迎合特朗普的政治恩怨而滥用大陪审团的现象。
两周前，“宽视六人组”案件中的大陪审团丑闻被曝光，导致司法部撤销了对几名政客的起诉。这些政客于去年9月在伊利诺伊州宽视的一个移民海关执法局拘留中心外被控阻碍联邦执法人员执法。
本周，随着法官试图查明起诉前大陪审团房间内发生的情况，法庭程序升级。
“宽视六人组”案件的辩方律师表示，他们发现的证据表明检方采取了轻率、有问题且政治化的手段，特朗普时期的司法部一心要对总统的批评者提起刑事指控。
克里斯·帕伦特是“宽视六人组”被告布莱恩·斯特劳的辩护律师，斯特劳是芝加哥附近一个自治市的当选受托人。帕伦特表示，芝加哥曝光的情况引发了人们对司法部如何在其他针对特朗普对手的高优先级案件中获得起诉的担忧——包括对前联邦调查局局长詹姆斯·科米等人的案件。
“托德·布兰奇在外面告诉所有人，‘别担心对科米、唐·莱蒙、南方贫困法律中心的大陪审团起诉’，”帕伦特说，他指出代理司法部长试图通过强调大陪审团的保密性和独立性，而非司法部的决策，来掩盖对针对特朗普对手的正在进行的案件的批评。
一名驻华盛顿的司法部官员周五表示，暗示司法部会考虑“宽视六人组”被告的政治立场“荒谬至极”。
自5月中旬以来的法庭程序和美国检察官办公室的声明揭示了此前保密的大陪审团程序在多个层面存在问题。
一名检察官——甚至可能包括布特罗斯本人——曾建议已经打定主意退出大陪审团的陪审员留下。
这些情况发生在去年10月，当时大陪审团首次投票反对起诉这些民主党官员。根据CNN获得的5月听证会 transcripts，美国检察官办公室在法庭上表示，在一次会议中，一名低级检察官将陪审员从大陪审团中移除，随后美国检察官办公室突然结束了大陪审团会议。
法庭文件和美国检察官办公室称，该办公室的一名检察官还向大陪审团“担保”司法部证据的强度，而非让大陪审团公正权衡，并且据称在大陪审团房间外不当与陪审员沟通。根据5月的记录，这名检察官现已离职。
“我从未见过大陪审团前的检方行为像这些记录中展示的那样，”法官在5月21日的听证会上表示，她将10月的大陪审团记录描述为案件接近起诉阶段的情况。
这一情况导致伊利诺伊州多名民选官员近日呼吁布特罗斯辞职——随着他的办公室还在围绕E·让·卡罗尔展开刑事调查，他面临的压力越来越大。卡罗尔是一名杂志专栏作家，此前曾指控唐纳德·特朗普性侵，并赢得了针对总统的巨额诽谤判决。
其他消息人士告诉CNN，布特罗斯办公室的检察官威廉·霍根上月向法院提交了大量删减内容的大陪审团记录，引发了法官对案件处理方式的怀疑，而这名检察官正是领导卡罗尔相关调查的人。
在CNN报道E·让·卡罗尔相关调查后，布特罗斯试图通过一份公开声明平息批评。他和司法部表示，他的芝加哥办公室“尚未启动——也从未启动过——针对E·让·卡罗尔的刑事调查”。
根据5月的法庭记录，法官阿普丽尔·佩里认为“宽视六人组”案件的记录删减是“最成问题的”，因为美国检察官办公室最近以掩盖去年大陪审团同意起诉前部分涉嫌检方不当行为的方式向法官提交了这些记录。
“错误在所难免，我们所有人都会犯错，”佩里在法庭上还表示，“但你绝不能掩盖错误……我深信程序正当性推定，相信大多数政府律师都在尽力做正确的事。但这种信任已经被打破了。”
霍根在5月21日的法庭上表示，他将为这些删减内容“承担责任”。
“宽视六人组”事件可能也会加大对布兰奇的审查力度。
辩方律师试图查明司法部在试图提起诉讼时的决策过程，以及检察官和布特罗斯为何如此与陪审员互动。
佩里目前正在考虑对检察官实施制裁，尽管该案已被驳回，但关于司法部行为的程序和法律辩论至少将持续到7月。芝加哥和其他地区的司法部检察官可能会被传唤出庭作证。
法官还在处理辩方律师的一项请求，要求获取布特罗斯办公室与华盛顿特区司法部领导层的联系记录，包括布兰奇去年秋天担任副检察长时的办公室。
辩方律师希望“了解是否有命令要求推进这场虚假的政治起诉来自华盛顿，以及司法部总部的官员在多大程度上跟踪或鼓励了本案的进展，”帕伦特昨日在一份声明中表示。
一名司法部官员周五表示，“宽视六人组”成员的反特朗普移民抗议和民主党政治立场与调查或起诉决定完全无关。
此外，司法部表示，在“内部批准起诉草案后”，美国检察官办公室并未就本案被告身份与华盛顿的司法部领导层沟通。
“宽视六人组”案件告吹后，布特罗斯面临着一场艰难的战斗：为自己及其办公室的工作辩护，回击政治操纵的指控。
在CNN和其他媒体报道了与卡罗尔相关的刑事调查存在后，这场辩护变得更加激烈。目前尚未提出任何指控，但反对特朗普政府的公职人员强烈批评这项调查。
“卡罗尔事件后，他开始分崩离析，”一名熟悉他想法的人士告诉CNN，他指出布特罗斯开始担心办公室里有人向记者泄密。
伊利诺伊州的民主党人和几名前杰出的联邦检察官办公室校友——如今大多在关系密切的芝加哥辩护律师界——一直严厉批评布特罗斯和他的联邦检察官办公室，在他任职期间，已有多名助理美国检察官离职。
三名知情人士告诉CNN，尚未获得参议院确认的布特罗斯曾向同事表达严重担忧，称有人企图玷污他的名声。
布特罗斯已发表了几份不同寻常的长篇声明，其中包括一份他称其办公室对“宽视六人组”大陪审团程序进行的“特别报告”。此前，司法部已请求法院驳回起诉并禁止再次提起诉讼。
这份五页的报告承认，布特罗斯于去年10月访问了大陪审团——这对任何美国检察官来说都是罕见的举动——当时该陪审团在两周前拒绝批准“宽视六人组”案件。
根据该报告中公开的部分记录，他询问陪审员是否“在某些类型的案件中感到挣扎，例如移民案件或其他他们认为无法放下个人情感的案件”。
法庭记录显示，当天大陪审团便批准了对“宽视六人组”的起诉。
芝加哥的一名助理美国检察官告诉法庭，布特罗斯的到访并非专门针对“宽视六人组”案件，他在参加秘密会议前曾咨询过首席法官。
代表“宽视六人组”被告的帕伦特告诉CNN，这番话不合逻辑，尤其是考虑到布特罗斯在大陪审团面前重点提到了移民案件。
“你永远说服不了我，他那天出现在大陪审团是随机的，”帕伦特本周表示。
辩方律师也向佩里提出了这一论点，法官仍在收集有关布特罗斯及其检察官大陪审团办案方式的信息。
5月21日的法庭听证会上，佩里本人曾是芝加哥联邦检察官，她质疑检察官的工作，并在记录中总结了大陪审团的不当行为，布特罗斯也出席了此次听证会。
“我非常真诚地相信，阁下，没有检察官故意误导您，也没有意图误导法庭，检察官没有故意不当行为，”布特罗斯在听证会上告诉法官。
听证会结束时，该案被驳回。
CNN记者汉娜·拉比诺维茨和宝拉·里德对本文亦有贡献。
Justice Department rushes to defense of Chicago US attorney after weeks of turmoil
2026-06-06T16:00:07.953Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/06/politics/chicago-us-attorney-e-jean-carroll-turmoil
- Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche publicly defended Chicago’s US Attorney Andrew Boutros amid mounting criticism.
- A judge described prosecutorial behavior in grand jury proceedings as unlike anything she had seen before.
- Defense attorneys question whether the Justice Department’s investigation was politically motivated by the Trump administration.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
After two weeks of turmoil at the US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Illinois, the acting attorney general has jumped in to publicly defend his leader on the ground in Chicago, Andrew Boutros.
Boutros, an ambitious, boastful, longtime line prosecutor-turned-defense attorney in a city filled with storied legal careers, came under fire when his office’s alleged mishandling of a high-profile investigation into a group of Democrat politicians and activists known as the Broadview Six became public.
Then, as his office was still dealing with the blowback, it was revealed Boutros’ office was overseeing the controversial investigation around E. Jean Carroll, President Donald Trump’s foe and sexual assault accuser.
The negative attention has led Boutros — who had worked in mainstream law firms before becoming Trump’s pick in Chicago and, according to attorneys who know him, had not shown partisanship previously in his career — to become weary of those in his office and of his contemporaries in the city’s legal community.
“This Department fully supports U.S. Attorney Boutros and his efforts to combat violent crime, drug trafficking, immigration violations, and fraud, and we look forward to more great work from his office,” Blanche said in a social media post on X on Thursday, the same day the president gave him the nod he’d nominate him to stay in the job.
Boutros responded to Blanche in his own post, thanking him for his support and criticizing what sources say he now believes is a coordinated effort to sabotage him.
“We have fixed — and continue to fix — an Office I inherited in April 2025 that was doing less than even the bare minimum, as widely reported in the press at that time,” Boutros wrote on Thursday on X.
“I am grateful to all of you,” Boutros also wrote, thanking prosecutors and other colleagues who have supported him, “and I will not forget how you all stood by me when others capitalized on the opportunity to attempt to destabilize the Office … under the guise that they love or even really care about this incredible and storied Office.”
The alliance between Boutros and Blanche isn’t likely to stop concerns that the prestigious US attorney’s office in Chicago is in crisis, or end a judge’s inquiry into its handling of the Broadview Six case.
It has also highlighted what some Justice Department critics say is grand jury abuse by the Justice Department in efforts around the country to appease Trump’s political vendettas.
It was two weeks ago when the grand jury scandal in the Broadview Six case was unearthed, leading the Justice Department to drop the indictment of several politicians who had been arrested on charges they impeded federal officers outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Broadview, Illinois, in September.
Court proceedings ratcheted up this week as a judge attempts to uncover what happened in the grand jury room ahead of the indictment.
Defense attorneys in the Broadview Six case say they believe what they’ve uncovered shows a cavalier, problematic and politicized approach and that the Trump Justice Department is bent on securing criminal charges against critics of the president.
Chris Parente, a defense lawyer for Broadview Six defendant Brian Straw, an elected trustee of a municipality near Chicago, says what’s come to the surface in Chicago raises concerns about how the Justice Department has secured indictments in other high-priority cases against Trump’s foes — including those against former FBI director James Comey and others.
“You have Todd Blanche out there telling everybody, ‘Don’t worry about [the] grand jury indictments of Comey, Don Lemon, Southern Poverty Law Center,’” Parente said, pointing to how the acting attorney general has attempted to shield criticism of the ongoing cases against Trump enemies by pointing to the secrecy and independence of grand juries, rather than the Justice Department’s choices.
A Justice Department official based in Washington said on Friday it was “absurd” to suggest the department would factor in the Broadview Six defendants’ politics.
Court proceedings in Chicago since mid-May and statements by the US attorney’s office have revealed problems before the previously confidential grand jury proceedings, on multiple levels.
A prosecutor — and potentially Boutros himself — suggested to grand jurors who had made up their mind to leave the grand jury.
Those statements happened in October after the grand jury first voted against indicting the Democratic officials. In one of the sessions, a lower-level prosecutor removed grand jurors from the grand jury, then the US attorney’s office abruptly ended the grand jury session, the US attorney’s office has said in court, according to transcripts from a May hearing about the issues obtained by CNN.
A prosecutor in the office also was “vouching to the grand jurors” for the strength of the Justice Department’s evidence in the case, rather than letting the grand jury weigh it impartially, the judge and the US attorneys’ office said in court, and was allegedly improperly communicating with grand jurors outside of the grand jury room, according to the May transcripts. That prosecutor no longer works in the office.
“I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts,” the judge said at a May 21 hearing, describing what she saw in grand jury transcripts from the sessions in October as the case was nearing indictment.
The situation has led multiple elected officials from Illinois to call for Boutros’ resignation in recent days — with the pressure on him as his office also pursues a criminal investigation around E. Jean Carroll, the magazine columnist who previously accused Donald Trump of assault and won a large defamation verdict against the president.
Other sources have noted to CNN that William Hogan, the prosecutor in Boutros’ office who submitted heavily redacted grand jury transcripts to the court last month, raising the judge’s suspicions of how the case was handled, is the same prosecutor leading the inquiry around Carroll.
Boutros tried to tamp down criticism with a public statement after the CNN report on an E. Jean Carroll investigation. He and the Justice Department have said his Chicago office “has not opened — and has never opened — a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll.”
The Broadview Six redactions were what Judge April Perry said she saw as “the most problematic,” according to a May court transcript, because the judge received those transcripts from the US attorney’s office recently in a way that obscured some of the alleged prosecutorial misconduct before the grand jury agreed to indict last year.
“Mistakes happen. They happen to all of us,” Perry also said in court. “What you do not do is hide it … I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing. That trust has been broken.”
Hogan in court on May 21 said he would “take responsibility for” the redactions.
The Broadview Six situation is likely to increase the scrutiny of Blanche, too.
Defense attorneys are attempting to uncover the Justice Department’s decision-making as it struggled to bring charges, and the reasons why prosecutors and Boutros interacted with the grand jurors as they did.
Perry now is considering sanctioning prosecutors in court, with proceedings and legal arguments about the Justice Department’s conduct set to continue at least into July, even though the case is dismissed. Justice Department prosecutors, in Chicago and elsewhere, could potentially be called into court for testimony.
The judge also is fielding a request from defense attorneys for records of Boutros’ office being in contact with the Justice Department’s Washington, DC, leadership, including Blanche’s office when he was deputy attorney general last fall.
The defense lawyers seek “to know whether or not the orders to pursue this sham political prosecution came from Washington, and how closely officials in the main Department of Justice were tracking or encouraging developments in this case,” Parente said in a statement yesterday.
A Justice Department official said on Friday that the anti-Trump immigration protesting and Democratic politics among those in the Broadview Six weren’t part of the investigation or charging decisions at all.
And, the Department has said the US attorney’s office didn’t communicate with Justice Department leadership in Washington about who the defendants in the case were “after a draft indictment was approved internally.”
Since the Broadview Six case fell apart, Boutros has faced the uphill battle of trying to defend himself, and his office’s work, against allegations of political maneuvering.
That effort became even more fevered after CNN and other outlets reported the existence of a criminal inquiry linked to Carroll. No charges have emerged, but public officials opposed to the Trump administration have harshly criticized the inquiry.
“After [Carroll], he started to crack at the seams,” one person familiar with his thinking told CNN, noting that Boutros became fearful that someone in his office was leaking to reporters.
Democrats in Illinois and several former prominent alumni of the US attorney’s office, who are now largely in the close-knit Chicago defense bar, have been highly critical of Boutros and his US attorney’s office, which has seen several of its assistant US attorneys leave during his tenure.
Three people familiar have told CNN that Boutros, who is not Senate confirmed, expressed serious concerns to associates that people are gunning to muddy his name.
Boutros has issued several unusual, lengthy statements, including a “special report” he says his office conducted of the Broadview Six grand jury proceedings, after the Justice Department asked the court to dismiss the indictment and bar it from being brought again.
The five-page report acknowledges that Boutros visited the grand jury, a rare move by any US attorney, in October last year, after that jury had declined to approve the Broadview Six case two weeks earlier.
He asked grand jurors to raise their hands if they were “struggling with a certain type of cases, such as the immigration cases or other cases where they do not believe that they can set aside their personal, their personal emotions,” according to a portion of the transcript the US attorney’s office made public in the report.
The grand jury then approved the Broadview Six indictment that day, court records show.
An assistant US attorney in Chicago has told the court that Boutros’ appearance wasn’t related specifically to the Broadview Six case, and that he consulted with the chief judge before visiting the secret session.
Parente, representing the Broadview Six defendant, told CNN this exchange defied logic, especially given that Boutros highlighted immigration cases before the grand jury.
“You’re never going to convince me it was a random time that he showed up in the grand jury that day,” Parente said this week.
The defense lawyers have made this argument to Perry as well, and the judge is still collecting information about Boutros’ and his prosecutors’ grand jury approach.
Boutros also appeared at the court hearing on May 21 when Perry, herself a former Chicago federal prosecutor, questioned the prosecutors’ work and summarized on the record the grand jury misconduct.
“It is my very sincere belief, Your Honor, that no prosecutor acted intentionally in misleading you, and that there was no desire to mislead the Court and no deliberate misconduct on the part of the prosecutors,” Boutros told the judge at the hearing.
At the end of that hearing, the case was dismissed.
CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz and Paula Reid contributed to this report.
